The Glut of Shows Unwatched
By DAVID CARR September 5, 2010
The great thing about modern technology is that you never have to miss anything on television. That's also the terrible thing about it.
Last Sunday, I was traveling and did not see "Mad Men." As someone who cares about being in the know, when I got back on Monday, I wanted to catch up on the episode. Because I spend time on Twitter, I already knew that the episode included a creative session conducted in the nude, so I wanted to see it for myself before I came across other spoilers.
Having set my DVR - I subscribe to the FiOS television service from Verizon - for just such a circumstance, my wife and I plopped down on Monday night for a little time with Don and Peggy. I hit play, and then the screen went blank. After several more attempts, I called in the household's chief technology officer.
"You recorded the high-def channel," said my 13-year-old daughter Maddie, adding that seeing as I own a cheap set from Costco, it wasn't going to play.
Check, but not checkmate. Verizon has an on-demand service, but as it turns out "Mad Men" doesn't show up for a few days. Starting to feel desperate, I thought for a moment about hopping on the laptop and searching BitTorrent for an illegal copy, but given that I make a living creating original content for a large media company, stealing from another one did not seem like a good idea.
Then I remembered iTunes. Right there for $2.99, Season 4, Episode 6, "Waldorf Stories." As I took the iPad downstairs to put it closer to the wireless signal, I told my wife it was going to take about 30 minutes to download. When I got back upstairs, she was already asleep and I shrugged and settled in for a little me time with the Mad Men. I woke up in the middle of the night with the iPad perilously balanced on my less-than-flat midsection, wondering what I had missed.
That was Monday. By Wednesday, Steve Jobs, the sensei of all consumer desires, had announced the resurrection of Apple TV. For $99, I could buy a new geegaw from Apple that would allow me to rent, not buy, television shows for 99 cents that would play on devices that won't fit on my stomach, like big flat-screen televisions. (Then again, for the time being only Fox and ABC are doing television business with Apple, so it would not have ended my search for "Mad Men.")
Apple is hardly alone. Amazon, Netflix and Google are getting in the television game. And all of them want to make sure that I have the means to dial up the programming I want at a time of my choosing on a device of my selection. Everyone wants to make sure that I never miss a thing.
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Telecom? I guess so: I've almost stopped keeing track. Is it a TV? A phone? A refrigerator? Your guess is as good as mine ...
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